I have burst these narrow
bonds of flesh, and my soul shall soar henceforth in the grandeur realized
of the Spirit, like a proud falcon just unmewed and flung off in sight of
the noblest quarry. Art! what a dull, meaningless sound it was
yesterday!--but now, the entombing pyramid of matter is up-heaved, flung
off forever, and the Spirit stands erect in her bright Palingenesis,
half-intoxicate with the all-pervading sense of her own grand beauty. The
tree is rent asunder,--Ariel soars again in his element. Psyche has loosed
herself from the fettering contact of Daimon, and lo, now, how daintily she
poises on tiptoe, fluttering her wings ere she launches like a star into
the wide exhilarant ether! O divine Art! pride, glory, first love of my
soul! now, indeed, hast thou exchanged the yoke of dull Saturn and the
gloomy caverns of earth for the fair heights of Olympus, and the
companionship of Zeus [Greek: Nephelaegeretaes], him at whose nod the
heavens display themselves like a many-figured arras, all alive with
beauties and significance that the dull eye conjectures not, that the
impure, unpurged eye shrinks away from, lest it be seared by the too great
splendor! I know it all now. I began gropingly, in surmise, error,
darkness; but now my brow catches, ay, and reflects, the calm, pure,
effulgent light of Nature's definite day, and I bathe myself in its happy
warmth. Erst, I grovelled like a worm, blind and earth-fed: now, I shall
speed through very space, winged heel and shoulder, a swift, untiring
Hermes, who have drunk of the milk that flows rich in Nature's breasts, and
am emancipate forever in the decorous freedom of the beautiful
self-conscious spirit! Oh, the glory, oh, the boon of Art, the play-deity!
Phoebus no longer drives herds for Admetus, but is grown into Helios, feels
in his breast the freer life of the very Hyperion, the walker on high.
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